1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a nonaqueous ink composition for ink jet recording and an ink jet recording method using the nonaqueous ink composition.
2. Related Art
The following processes have been conventionally used to record images having a metallic gloss on recording media: the application of ink containing a golden or silvery powder prepared from brass, aluminum, or silver particles; hot-stamping using a metal foil; and a thermal transfer process.
In recent years, many applications for ink jet printing have been seen. One of the applications is metallic printing. For example, JP-A-2008-174712 discloses an aluminum pigment dispersion containing an organic solvent such as an alkylene glycol and a nonaqueous ink composition containing the aluminum pigment dispersion.
However, in the case of recording a metallic image on a recording medium using a nonaqueous ink composition containing a conventional pigment (hereinafter simply referred to as “metal pigment”) made of a metal such as aluminum, most of an organic solvent contained in the nonaqueous ink composition permeates the recording medium or evaporates and therefore is hardly present on a surface of the recording medium. Thus, the metal pigment is exposed on the recording medium surface. Since the metal pigment has poor fixability to the recording medium, there is a problem in that the metallic image has poor abrasion resistance.
Furthermore, the nonaqueous ink composition, which contains the conventional pigment, has a problem with storage stability because the metal pigment aggregates during long-term storage to cause quality deterioration. After the nonaqueous ink composition is deteriorated in storage stability, any good metallic image cannot be obtained and it is difficult to eject the nonaqueous ink composition from a recording head of an ink jet printer.